Wed Nov 06, 2002 9:13 am by skywalker1187
Mandarin Chinese is what is most often meant when someone talks about Chinese. It is spoken primarily in the northeast of China, but it is also the official language, so it is taught throughout the entire country. <BR><BR>In the south of China Cantonese is the most widely spoken language. Where mandarin has only 4 tones, cantonese has 8 and as such is usually more difficult for westerners to learn. In the south, Cantonese is spoken on the streets and in the home, but Mandarin is used in official capacity, i.e. school, documents, etc. However, many from rural areas, where education was not such a big priority are hard pressed to produce even a few basic words in Mandarin, just as in part of California, Colorado, etc, some people would be hard pressed to speak any english, even though it is our main language.<BR><BR><BR>Contrary to popular belief, and even many fellow sinologists are unaware of this, but Cantonese has its own seperate writing system. <BR><BR>The Cantonese, those living in a portion of the south of China, tend to be very migratory and have setup many overseas communities, i.e. Singapore, San Francisco, Vancouver, etc., bringing with them their language. As a result, I am unable to impress my friends when I go out to get a bite to eat in your average San Fran restaurant, because many of the people there came pre-reform (before they began teaching Mandarin in the schools), thus I can speak my mandarin all day long, but still have 0 communication.<BR><BR>The actor in the movie who spoke the 2 or so lines in Chinese, I believe to be an ABC, american born chinese, from the fact that he spoke Cantonese in the movie and when I saw him speaking mandarin in another movie, (he played some big commie hauncho in "Art of War", Wesley Snipes), his mandarin was not so fluent, leaving me with the impression that he had studied it, in probably the same manner I had. Of course, the last part is just a guess, nothing more.<BR><BR>Why do I know all this shit? I'm a sinologist, its the one I do, might as well do it well. If any other sinos out there wanna take this apart, feel free, I'm still a student anyways, got lots to learn.<BR><BR>One last bit of info, they are often referred to as dialects of Chinese by the govt, however don't let this fool you. Linguists like to refer to dialects as being without armies and languages as being with them. For example, Serbo-Croation is treated by the vast majority of people to be one language with only minor variation b/w the two dialects, however, for the Serbs and Croats, who both have armies, they refer to each of their dialects as "languages". Even tough a Mandarin speaker would be lucky to have 2% communication with a Cantonese speaker, Cantonese has no seperate Army and thus is referred to by the Chinese authorities as a "dialect" of Chinese. The unfortunate results of the union between politics and language.<BR><BR><font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: skywalker1187 on 2002-11-06 15:23 ]</font>
